After The Bomb Blew
by Alertbay
Summary: This is a post season 8 fic featuring Harry and Ruth. It takes place minutes after the end of episode 8.8. No copyright infringement intended. Characters belong to Kudos.


"After The Bomb Blew"

"Harry!? Harry!?" Ruth was virtually yelling down the phone line. She had rung Harry on his mobile which had connected and then gone dead.

Ruth hung up her phone and dialed again

"Yes". Ruth's heart soared at the sound of Harry's familiar gruffness.

"Harry, are you okay? Are Ros and Lucas with you?" inquired Ruth.

"I'm alive. The paramedics are with me now and I've sent the plods in to find Lucas,

Ros and the Home Secretary. – Ruth, I've got to go." Harry rang off.

Tariq inquired, "Are they all right?"

Ignoring him, Ruth murmured, "Alive! Alive! What is that supposed to mean?"

At the look on Tariq's face, she composed herself and responded to his question,

"Harry's with the paramedics. There's no word on the others."

Tariq and Ruth continued monitoring the calls in and out of the scene.

Meanwhile, Harry was arguing with the medic who was trying to convince him that he needed to go to the hospital. Finally, Harry stood and just walked away, leaving the medic shaking his head. A short distance away, Harry, his forehead bandaged and his left arm in a sling, stopped for a moment scanning the area in search of someone who might know what was going on. The group of uniformed individuals ahead seemed the most likely place to start. Approaching them, he pulled out his badge and confidently requested information about the explosion.

Before he finished speaking, he saw Lucas come limping into view. Harry strode over to Lucas as he called for a medic.

"Where's Ros?", asked Lucas, "I couldn't get back to her in time, Harry. Where's Ros?"

Lucas scanned all the way around him until he stopped, gasping as he saw the gaping hole in the side of the building. "Ros", he called softly.

Harry passed Lucas on to the paramedics and took up a position of waiting by the communications van. Someone at sometime brought him a chair and he sat, waiting, as his mind drifted in and out of the present. His mind drifted back over the officers he'd lost and those he'd found and those he'd lost and found and lost again. Ros! So difficult in the beginning but becoming one of his favourites. When she believed, she believed with all her devotion.

Harry wasn't sure how much time had passed when he felt a gentle arm around his shoulders. He turned to see her…Ruth, standing beside him, looking at him with concern and – was it possible – relief in her eyes.

She leaned close to his ear and whispered, "Harry, I'm so glad you're all right. I don't know what I'd do if I lost you again."

He reached an arm around her waist and pulled her in close. He wanted to say so much to her but didn't trust himself to speak.

She was still standing there by him when news of Ros' death came to him. Harry and Ruth waited until they brought Ros' broken body out on a stretcher.

"She's finally at rest"

Harry took her hand where it lay hanging over the side of the stretcher and gently placed it by her side. He leaned over her and gently brushed her hair out of her eyes. Another funeral for Ros.

She had saved the Home Secretary's life – that and the muscle relaxant given him by the Nightingale agents. The relaxed state of his body had allowed him to survive the force of the blast. Ros had shoved him in the elevator at the last moment and pushed the door closed just before the bomb exploded.

Ruth took Harry's hand in her own and gently led him to his car. She fished his keys out of his pocket and guided him into the passenger seat. She took her place in the driver's seat and started the car. They drove in silence to Harry's house.

Ruth turned to Harry as she turned off the car, "Would you like me to come in for a while?". Slowly, he turned to face her and she could see the tears starting in his eyes. He began to cry harder as she reached over to him and took him in her arms. Soon they were both in tears, each comforting the other for the people they had lost today and before.

As their tears began to subside, Ruth pulled back, not certain whether to feel embarrassed at their unusual vulnerability or to be pleased that they had finally found a way to comfort each other. Harry, in the face of Ros' death, however, seemed to discover a new resolve. He scrubbed his hands across his face and cleared his throat to speak, "Thank you, Ruth. I don't know what I'd do without you."

She replied, "you seemed to manage fine while I was 'dead"!".

"That's just it, Ruth," he said, "I didn't. I survived but I didn't manage. Ruth, I love you. I've loved you for a long time and I'm sorry that I haven't had the courage to tell you. If you could find it in your heart to take pity on an aging spook, I want to spend the rest of my life with you."

Ruth's eyes began to fill with tears again, though, rather than tears of sorrow, these were tears of joy. How she had waited to hear those words. At times, she had hated him for letting her live without those words and others when she wanted the peace that came from rejecting love.

"Harry", she responded in a low voice, "I've loved you from afar – and when you finally tried to bring that love closer to me, I ran in terror from it – ran all the way to Cyprus – all the way into the arms of another man, hoping to forget you. I thought that man died because of me. Because of me, not you. But I've realized – Jo made me realize - that he died because of Mani. Mani was a terrorist and terrorists do bad things. "

"Ruth, what are you saying?", Harry turned to her with a look of pain in his eyes.

"I'm trying to say that I've been punishing myself by denying my love for you but it's Mani who should be punished, not me…not you. Harry, what I'm trying to say is, 'I love you'. I love you and I want more than a friendly drink together, a chat on the rooftop, a smile in the corridor. I want you! For the rest of my life".

Ruth turned away and stepped out of the car. Harry called after her, "Ruth?!".

Ruth stepped around the car and opened Harry's door for him and reached for his hand. "Harry, let's go home", she said with a smile. Harry took her hand and drew her into the house.***********


End file.
